Often, when there is a distinction between two alternatives, and when people are uncomfortable by there being just two alternatives, and find it inexplicable that there are only two, the natural inclination people have is to try to find a third. (Think, for example, about debates about the law of excluded middle in logic, or about attempts to find a middle way between therapeutic and theoretical--resolute and orthodox--readings of the Tractatus.)

I believe that sometimes the real problem in such cases is obscured when people try to find a middle way. The real problem, what people may really be unclear about, is the main categories--the two initial categories--they were unsatisfied with. This is what they need to clarify. Instead, their focus is on some imaginary shady middle category that they really cannot see very well at all.

It is I think the best policy, in many such cases, to turn our attention back to the primary categories--to begin again. When we do this we can find, and do often find, what we really need, and what we are really interested in. For one thing, we may discover that the categories we began with--each of them--might not be all that homogenous. (We may find, for instance, that in different cases being true or being false means different things, or that there are deeply different kinds of theory and deeply different kinds of therapy.)

The unclarity--the real problem--is often about the variety I just mentioned, and it would be useful if the discussion was focused on this rather than on the imaginary third category. When we focus on that shady middle alternative, we lose track of what we are unclear about in the first place.

In Beyond Moral Judgment Alice Crary describes her view in this way:The view of ethics laid out in this book […] takes for granted the logic of the wider conception of rationality and in consequence it differs from impartiality criticisms in suggesting that there is something confused about the very idea of a vantage point outside individuals’ affective lives from which to determine that moral responsibility calls for bringing these lives within morality “from the beginning.” At the same time, the view also differs from impartiality criticisms, not only in making the widely rational suggestion that (without regard to its form) rational moral thought is essentially informed by and expressive of individuals’ sensibilities, but also in thereby suggesting that demands for regulating the play of sensibility in accordance with prior moral judgments represent an unqualified and entirely general threat to the development of moral understanding. (My italics) There is here what I’ve called a pot paradox: an argument that is so strong that it threatens its own coherency. To see that, I’ve italicized two claims Crary makes: one logical, and one moral. The morally problematic demands Crary talks of—to curb our sensibilities according to some prior independent moral understanding—are expressive of what she calls “moralism.” These demands, she thinks, stem from and are nourished by a logically confused and ultimately incoherent idea of a vantage point from which such moral understanding is even possible: moral understanding in abstraction from our sensibilities. But, one may ask, how can a demand be a bad one if it is incoherent, or logically rests on an incoherent claim? If it is incoherent, it seems, then it is not even really a demand in the first place—bad or good; it does not have enough sense in it to allow it to rise up to the level of a demand. And that’s a pot paradox. Wrestling with nonsense in general, and dealing with pot paradoxes in particular requires a special kind of intellectual effort—a special kind of use of the imagination, a special kind of patience. To wrestle with nonsense—e.g. to find something that someone has said nonsensical—is not to wrestle with something we already know is nonsense. It is to wrestle with our inability to make sense of what has been said, which also worries about the possibility, but does not make an unwavering claim, that the speaker herself only thinks she has spoken meaningfully. It is to be willing to try again and again. Crary doesn’t say enough that I can see to say how, she thinks, this paradox is to be dealt with. There are three possibilities I can think of, and I will take them one at a time. The discussion below is meant as a partial demonstration of what it could take to deal with a pot paradox—to wrestle with nonsense. a) First, then, with regard to the pot paradox in Crary’s book, we may think that enough sense can be made of the idea of that ‘abstract vantage point’ from which moral understanding is supposedly possible—not only that we can “grasp enough of its spirit,” but that there is a coherent idea there somewhere. This is one possibility for resolving the pot paradox in Crary’s book. It would involve significantly weakening, if not giving up completely on, the logical claim Crary makes. Perhaps, we may think, there is some minimum subset of sensitivities that can ground a dwindled, and depleted, but yet coherent kind of moral understanding—perhaps something along the lines of Bernard Williams’ notion of Kantian morality. My sense is that Crary’s discussion shares the spirit of this kind of solution. The kind of moral failures she concentrates on, and is interested in, are typically failures of responsiveness to particular dimensions of life which are failures of the imagination: failures to take a hint, to be emotionally moved, to find something funny, to see through another’s eyes, to be drawn to a certain style of description, to a word, and so on. Crary does not focus her attention on what the kind of philosophy she criticizes takes to be the core set of issues of moral thinking: rational moral judgments—‘murder is wrong,’ ‘slavery is wrong,’ and so on. She thus gives the impression that this part of the moralism she attacks remains immune to her criticism. And if it is indeed so immune, then although the views Crary is criticizing may not be comprehensive, they also do not threaten to be nonsensical, and their criticism is therefore not in danger of being pray to a pot paradox. Having said this, however, it is not clear to me how strong Crary wants her logical claim to be. I am not, that is, sure if, or to what extent, Crary is interested in pursuing the stronger claim that a moralist who would be thoroughly true to her creed, the moralist who would truly think in abstraction from her sensibilities, would not even be able to make anything that we could recognize as a moral judgment—not even about murder and slavery. On a strong reading of Crary’s logical claim, a moralist like this says things that appear not to make much sense. Criticizing her for this, however, would mean that our battle with nonsense is not yet over. b) There is another possibility for dealing with the pot paradox Crary is facing. For me this is a more interesting possibility, but discussion of it may go beyond Crary’s interests. Crary, as we’ve seen, makes a connection between a kind of logical incoherence and a kind of deficiency in moral understanding, and I have argued that this connection is unstable. Now, the instability here depends on the idea that the logical and moral points are separate: that even though they are internally connected, they are still not the very same claim. This, however, may not be necessary. And this suggests another way of dealing with Crary’s pot paradox: It is possible that the very logical philosophical confusion Crary describes, the very idea of a moral life in abstraction from our sensitivities, may itself be expressive of a kind of moral attitude. According to this idea, the moral failing involved—assuming for the moment there is one—is not something in addition to the philosophical one. Rather, the philosophical confusion here would itself be an expression of a refusal to accept our finitude. In Stanley Cavell’s terms, it implicates us in treating our limits as limitations. Now, making this sort of criticism—saying that someone is treating their limits as limitations—is not yet a way of making sense of the problematic view we are criticizing. It is still being in the grip of a pot paradox. For to treat your limits as limitations would be to treat an idea that does not make any obvious sense as if it stood for something in particular that you cannot do—go back in time, feel another’s pain, count to infinity, and so on. It is to confuse two senses of “impossible”—the nonsensical with the too difficult. It is, that is, to be deeply confused; but it is not to do anything in particular. And this means that the resolute critic yet again finds herself criticizing someone for doing nothing in particular—she finds herself yet again in the grip of a pot paradox. We can say that the person who is presumably treating limits as limitations is being criticized not so much for what she does, but for failing to do something. This is possible, but it is of little use. For one thing, that person would likely find this criticism baffling. She would feel she is thereby being robbed of her first person authority: that someone is trying to argue with her, not by saying she is mistaken about the truth of what she believes, but about whether she believes something in the first place. And she would probably feel she can do with this criticism just about as much as she can with someone who denies that she finds something funny when she says she does, or is in pain. The resolute critic seems to be at the end of her rope here. To the extent that her criticism makes any sense, the one she is criticizing will not be able to accept her criticism, or even understand it. c) Finally, there is a third way of dealing with the pot paradox in Crary’s book—a way to make sense of the view she criticizes, or a view that shares some features with the view she attacks. The view I have in mind also involves a refusal, or inability, to accept our limits, and the wish to treat them as limitations. Crary connects such refusal to a kind of moralism, and for the most part she treats it as a kind of moral failing. Mostly, if I understand, she has in mind the kind of moral attitude that would leave one cold to certain details in the texture of human life—to nuances of character, relationships, or situations. But there is another kind of moral failing that is connected with such a refusal. I have in mind the kind of attitude that Wittgenstein in the Tractatus calls “unhappiness.” Such an attitude comes out, for instance, in a kind of resentment directed towards the very conditions of human life: towards such facts as that we get old, that we are fallible, that we depend on others, that we cannot become someone else, that we have a body, and so on. Indeed the two failings may be connected. Moralism of the kind Crary talks of may be a kind of unhappiness: it can be understood as a wish that life were simpler, and a refusal to accept the defining role of the particularities of human life for human moral thinking. But nevertheless, such moralism—such idea of moral understanding in abstraction from our sensibilities and the details of human life—does not necessarily indicate unhappiness. The refusal to accept our finitude, the treating of our limits as limitations, in one of its inflections, may rather be expressive of a deep religious-like type of moral attitude. Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics gives an expression to such an attitude. This is how the Lecture ends:My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language. This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it. Arguably, there is room for a view of ethics that does not run in the ordinary channels of life, but is an attitude to life as a whole—as if from the outside. And it is not, I think, a surprise that such a view could strike us as deeply moralistic. The moralism, as it were, is its whole point.

In the previous post I argued that there is danger in logical criticism—specifically in claiming that some argument someone has made is really nonsensical. For if successful, such criticism may leave itself nothing to criticize, and thus undermine itself. I suggested that we call that paradoxical situation “pot paradoxes.” I also noted that it is not uncommon for orthodox readers of Wittgenstein, with their typically substantial conceptions of nonsense, to attempt such problematic criticisms, and not uncommon for resolute readers to point out the difficulty of such criticisms: to point out that the orthodox thinker has entangled herself in a pot paradox. But notice: pointing out the difficulty here has the form of saying that the orthodox thinker has lapsed into nonsensicality. That is, it has the form of saying that the orthodox reader has made no coherent claim. If that is the case, however, then what claim is the resolute reader supposed to be criticizing exactly? – It very much seems that merely by trying to point out that the orthodox reader has entangled herself in a pot paradox, the resolute thinker has entangled herself in a pot paradox of her own. There is a kind of bogginess that characterizes pot paradoxes. Resolute thinkers have no magic shield to protect themselves against pot paradoxes. They come up against them too from time to time—and not only in the context of mounting criticisms against substantial readings of Wittgenstein. The battle with nonsense in general—against the kind of bogginess that characterizes discussions of nonsense—is the bread and butter of the resolute thinker; and pot paradoxes in particular are not the sole property of the substantial thinker. The problem is common property. Still, the resolute thinker is different. What distinguishes the resolute thinker is first her ability to own the paradox: to recognize that a line of thought has been derailed into incoherence and is now locked, or soaked, in a battle with nonsense—like a man wrestling with an angel. Second, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to recognize the problems we face when dealing with this paradox—when wrestling with nonsense—their shape, their dimensions, their bogginess. And third, the resolute thinker is distinguished by her willingness to wrestle. Of course, the willingness of any particular resolute thinker—their patience—may run out. In a future post I plan to discuss this issue of patience in connection with Alice Crary's Wittgensteinian ethics. In any case, in general her willingness to keep wrestling with nonsense is a measure of the resoluteness of a thinker. Let me say something about the willingness I just spoke of to wrestle with nonsense: the willingness to appreciate the reasons and consequences of a line of thought being derailed into nonsensicality. Since such wrestling is itself exposed to entanglement in pot paradoxes—this was the moral above about the fate of the resolute criticism of substantial claims about nonsense—such wrestling typically requires and thus involves a particular use of the imagination: pretending that a particular bit of nonsense makes sense, stepping into frame of mind from which it seems as if nonsensical claims could mean something. Typically, therefore, resolute dealing with nonsense involves refusal to dismiss a nonsensical expression: “I wish you could feel my pain,” “I wish I could turn back time,” and an insistence on finding a way to capture what is yet humanly important in those all-too-natural forms of expression: For the person coming up with those expressions, confused as she may be, may still be experiencing something real. It may even be part of her complaint that she cannot find a straight and secure way to express herself—her words keep imploding, and she is helpless also to make others acknowledge her distress. She is not merely distressed; she is bogged down by her own needs. Typically, to acknowledge such distress requires readiness to implicate one’s own line of thinking, oneself, in nonsense—willingness to imaginatively step into the frame of mind from which nonsense looks like sense.